Kidnapping the Prince

Kidnapping the Prince Installment XXIII

Kidnapping the Prince Installment XXIII

Strangely enough, creating chaos in an army camp was extremely difficult.

“You would think that burning down a tent would be enough,” I huffed angrily, leaning back until I hung from the tree branch by my knees. I’d spent all morning planning such a clever scheme and the stupid soldiers weren’t even fazed. As soon as the flamed had gotten high enough for anyone to notice, three soldiers each grabbed a bucket and meandered off towards the stream while everyone else just went on with their boring lives. Once the three soldiers came back they dumped the water on the tent and that was that. No fuss whatsoever.

“They’re all trained soldiers who have nerves of steel. They can kill ten men in ten seconds without batting an eye. What made you think burning down a tent would work?” Lucas snorted from a somewhere a few branches away.

“Well I would be pretty panicked if my tent were to start burning,” I half snapped, half whined. As Lucas laughed unhelpfully, I saw an upside-down Ryan make his way towards the tree we were sitting in.

“Would you two please come down?” he asked once he was close enough. I sneered at the ridiculously jeweled sword his hand rested on, but pulled myself up and jumped out of the tree anyway. Swaying slightly from the sudden rush of blood out of my head, I turned to face Ryan.

“What do you want?” I asked quite rudely, then rather childishly added, “And take that sword off. You look stupid.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Lynx,” Ryan said quietly.

“Oh, of course, I of all people should know that, since the last time I judged you by your cover I was way off.” I felt my anger bubbling dangerously close to the surface. Or maybe it was already at the surface. Hard to tell when you’re mad.

“Stop it,” Lucas demanded. I shot him a glare but fell silent.

Ryan cleared his throat. “I just wanted to talk to you about what you tried this morning.”

Although I knew he was referring to the tent burning incident, I wasn’t in a very good mood so I said, “What incident?” Ryan obviously knew that I knew what he was talking about and sighed.

“You know what I’m referring to, Lynx,” he said quite patiently, which made me want to punch him. “Now, will you two please come with me? These are delicate matters and should be discussed in private.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I realized that talking about burning down a tent in a tree was different from discussing it on the ground where any passing soldier could hear us. But I was still determined to have the last word so I scoffed, “Oh my, such fancy speech you have! ‘Delicate matters’ indeed!” Ryan looked away, his annoyance evident on his face, but he said nothing.

“Come along then. Let’s go discuss delicate matters in private.” I marched off, knowing the two boys would follow, only I had no idea where I was going. As Marse had helpfully pointed out earlier, our tents were guarded, and as tent canvas isn’t exactly sound-proof, it wouldn’t be a good idea to talk in there. So I just walked, and walked and walked until we had made our way to the other side of camp.

“You want us to talk here?” Lucas asked, eyeing the swarms of soldiers.

“Um, why not?” I answered less confidently than I’d have liked.

“It was rhetorical,” he snorted. “This place sucks.”

Ryan chose that moment to cut in. “I was actually going to suggest my tent. You’ll notice it’s unguarded.” He pointed behind him, drawing our attention to a tent with a black flag above it.